High School

"High School," the movie's called. Get it? HIGH school. As in, just about everyone inside the building is blitzed to their scalps on high-grade pot.

Surely this could be a fine premise for an entertaining stoner flick. It isn't. The screenplay is so cognitively impaired that the filmmakers might have been better off hacking up "Fast Times at Ridgemont High," "Dazed and Confused" and "Dude, Where's My Car?" and then sticking together random bits with masking tape. At least that would have made some sense.

At this point, he and Travis have a few options at their disposal. They can:

1. Complain that their civil rights are being violated;

2. Steal urine and smuggle it in; or

3. Skip school that day.

Now, most people - if they were characters in a high school stoner movie - would go for the third option. Travis and Henry do not. Instead, they steal a batch of super-amped amaze-a-weed from a drug dealer called Psycho Ed (Adrien Brody, flaring every available facial feature), then whip it into a gigantic batch of brownies, then sneak the loaded brownies into the PTA bake sale, then watch in amusement while students, teachers and administrators proceed to get well and truly baked.

This is a breathtakingly stupid plan for a young man who's supposed to be smart. Also stupid: the film's underlying message, which suggests that maybe Henry wasted his high school years by studying too hard.

"High School" does look good. Mitchell Amundsen's cinematography is firm-handed and handsome, and director/co-writer John Stalberg, in his feature debut, knows how to play the slow zooms and stunned close-ups to nice effect. But his screenplay with Stephen Susco tanks under the weight of accumulating moronic cliche, and his actors flail in an effort to find the right rhythm and tone.